Mary Prince (c. 1 October 1788 – after 1833)[1] was the first black woman to publish an autobiography of her experience as a slave, born in the colony of Bermuda to an enslaved family of African descent. After being sold a number of times and being moved around the Caribbean, she was brought to England as a servant in 1828, and later left her enslaver.
Prince was illiterate,[2] but while she was living in London she dictated her life story to Susanna Strickland,[3] a young lady living in the home of Thomas Pringle, secretary of the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions (aka Anti-Slavery Society, 1823–1838). Strickland wrote down her slave narrative which was published as The History of Mary Prince in 1831, the first account of the life of a Black enslaved woman to be published in the United Kingdom. This first-hand description of the brutalities of enslavement, published at a time when slavery was still legal in Bermuda and British Caribbean colonies, had a galvanising effect on the British anti-slavery movement. It was reprinted twice in its first year.
- ^ David Hughes, "Mary Prince marked with Google Doodle ?", i News, 1 October 2018.
- ^ "Mary Prince, The Woman Who Struck Back at Empire". New Politic. 19 November 2021. Retrieved 20 February 2022.
- ^ "Mary Prince | Slave Narrative". mary-prince. Retrieved 11 July 2022.